Add a cheap (and kind of ugly) backlight to your Eee PC

Wish your Eee PC was easier to type on in the dark? With its tiny size and light weight, it’s tempting to take your Eee PC into bed and read the “paper” before going to sleep instead of reading a book. But shut off the lights and it can be a bit hard to find the right keys.

So why not add a backlight? That’s what the folks at Popular Science did. All it takes is about $15 in parts, and a lot of patience. According to the Popular Science instructions, the project should take about 3 hours. If you’ve never ripped apart a computer and hacked away at the insides, I’m going to guess this could take even longer. And of course, there’s always a chance that you’ll fry the insides of your computer. But hey, the results are all worth it: an Eee PC that glows rather eerily because the light doesn’t come through the keys at all, just through the spaces between them.

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